Reflections on motivation: How regulatory focus influences self-framing and risky decision making

Abstract

Regulatory focus theory is a new motivation theory that surpasses the hedonic principle of approaching pleasure and avoiding pain to uncover how individuals approach positive goals and avoid negative goals. This study explores (1) how regulatory focus influences the ways in which individuals comprehend and process decision making and form different self-frames and (2) how regulatory focus and self-framing affect risky decision making. Results of Studies 1 and 2 suggest that chronic and situational regulatory focus exert similar effects on self-framing: promotion-focused individuals were more willing to use positive words to describe ambiguous decision-making information and created more positive self-frames compared with prevention-focused individuals. The effects of regulatory focus and self-framing on decision making were each significant. Additionally, self-framing was found to suppress the effect of regulatory focus on decision making. Implications and limitations of these findings are also discussed.